Jean Margaret James

03/05/1933 – 07/03/2024

Past staff

In 1978, Jean was chosen to open what is now an icon in Wesley’s past: the Preparatory School at Glen Waverley. She understood the extent of that challenge. Yet, throughout all the trials, tribulations and triumphs involved in starting a school, she remained a true believer. Her belief in coeducation’s timeliness inspired another set of true believers, her colleagues.

Change divides even the most authentic of communities. In the 1970s, many Wesleyans wanted their daughters to wear the purple and gold. Yet, nearly as many thought that introducing girls would be the beginning of the end for this ‘great Australian school’.

Jean believed that her God had called her to this task. She never contemplated failure. Her conviction was pure. Brilliant colleagues, an exquisitely unique, purpose-built architectural setting at the Glen Waverley Campus and a passion for her profession, greater than any she had felt before: everything was right! She would often say to me, ‘How could we ever fail?’ Her conviction, like so many of her other qualities, was contagious.

This revolution happened nearly fifty years ago. Wesley is now synonymous with contemporaneity. Our Preparatory school has since become a lighthouse not only for young Wesleyans, but for other Early Childhood educators throughout Australia. The values nurtured in those spaces are timeless.

As Jean’s graduates moved their frontier of anti-gender discrimination through our school, their contribution to growth at Wesley burgeoned. They enticed others to come join them, to understand that being a good person, who valued difference in its many guises, mattered.

It was not only students who influenced that cultural shift at Wesley and in our wider community. Many of her early colleagues went on to challenging positions of responsibility at or beyond Wesley. I often meet those OWs in their various positions of responsibility. They are now in their forties and early fifties. They affectionately recall ‘Mrs James’ and their memories of ‘her school’.

Most adults underplay the importance of childhood, considering it simply 'games and finger-painting' but not Jean, nor those she inspired. These were the years when you learned to say with meaning, ‘I can!’ Years when you learned to listen, to share, to imagine, to admire, to think of others. Equally, you learned to spell, to read and to write, and to do your sums. Jean’s list was endless. But most importantly, you learned to begin to put meaning into a world that was incomprehensible, full of a myriad of stimuli that had to be understood, to be systematised, to be correlated and even to be thought causal! For Jean, the best and most highly skilled teaching was done in the Preparatory years, from Beginners to Year 4. For Jean, the young mind was doing the most complex work.

At her funeral, I sat with some great Wesleyans, who knew Jean first-hand. The incomparable Kim Anderson, Pat Stevens, Judy Ridgway, Jan Lynden-Bell and Sue Stubbs, the inimitable Ross and Christine Oakley, mighty Martyn Smith and his daughter Kirrily, past Head Peter Dickenson, and the enigmatic Brian Nankervis. They each had their own cherished memories of Jean on the countless stages she graced at Wesley.

She was, in no way, self-centred or egotistical. If there was ever a bad word spoken of Jean, I did not hear it. I was not at Wesley when someone very astute decided to name the Preparatory School oval, the ‘Jean M James’ oval. But I know she was absolutely delighted.

Her delight lay not in any feelings that might involve ego-stroking or something similar, but in her most private thoughts: it would be that the ‘powers that be’ had recognised that she had done her singularly complex and difficult task for Wesley as well as she could, that she had been very successful, and that her God would have been pleased, even very pleased.

Contributed by Tony Conabere
Head of Glen Waverley Campus (1977-1985) and Head of St Kilda Road Campus (Prahran) (1986-1995)

Remembering Jean James

If you would like to share a special memory or post a tribute to Jean James, please email owca@wesleycollege.edu.au and we will share it below.

Tributes